7.29.18Home > News > Canadian divers end world juniors with two fourth place finishes

Canadian divers end world juniors with two fourth place finishes

KIEV, Ukraine – Rylan Wiens of Saskatoon placed fourth on men’s 10-m tower while Mia Vallée of Beaconsfield, Que., and Margo Erlam of Calgary were also fourth on women’s three-metre synchro on Sunday at the FINA World Junior Diving Championships.

Canada ends the eighth-day meet with one gold, one bronze and five fourth place results.

On men’s tower, Junjie Lian of China was the winner with 589.30 points followed by Ruslan Ternovoi of Russia at 543.90 while Zheng Li of China was third at 523.55.

Wiens produced two spectacular dives to end the competition and nearly snatched a medal from the powerful Chinese finishing with 516.40.

‘’I came out kind of struggling a bit in the final,’’ said Wiens, who posted the top compulsory scores in the preliminaries. ‘’But then I knew I had to put my head down and get back into it and I did those two last dives really good.’’

Laurent Gosselin-Paradis of Montreal took ninth spot.

‘’I’m pretty happy about my performance today,’’ he said. ‘’There were two dives in the final I could have done better but overall it was steady.’’

On women’s three-metre synchro, Tong Ma and Rui Zhang of China took the gold at 265.50, Uliana Kliueva and Vitaliia Koroleva of Russia were second at 255.00 and Rin Kaneto and Mai Yadusa of Japan third at 254.28.

Vallée and Erlam were fourth out of 14 entries with 249.12. It was their first competition together. Vallée was scheduled to dive with Olivia Chamandy but Chamandy was injured just prior to the start of the competition last week.

‘’It went pretty well considering we only had two days of practice together,’’ said Vallée. ‘’I’m really proud that we came so close to the podium and also that our synchro was probably one of our strongest elements in the whole event.’’

The Canadian medallists this week were Henry McKay of Ottawa and Victor Povzner of Maple, Ont., with gold on men’s three-metre synchro and Cedric Fofana of Quebec City on men’s three-metre.